Talent management best practice series

The 21st century brings a unique and unprecedented set of challenges and potential opportunities for organizations.

The competitive landscape is increasingly global in scope. Today, even small or midsize companies are challenged to compete on a global scale. The number of multinational corporations has doubled since 1990.1 Growth opportunities are more prevalent in developing regions of the world where the middle class and new consumers are emerging rapidly. In fact, the global middle class is expected to grow by 172 percent from 2010 to 2030.2 At the same time, there are shifts in the available talent pool and workforce demographic. An aging demographic in the West is yielding to higher proportions of college graduates coming from Latin America, Russia, and Asia. Individuals are being asked to do more with less, but they also have higher expectations for their employers and are more mobile than previous generations. Consumers also have higher expectations, and the companies that make the best use of technology and data analytics to better understand their customers and break down barriers will win.3,4

The pace of market growth, the speed of innovation, and ever-changing demographics create more opportunities to both create and extract value, but it's often more difficult to pinpoint those opportunities and act upon them.

So, how do companies compete in this increasingly complex and changing environment? One of the central differentiators for companies is a sound business strategy. Leaders who are adept at creating winning strategies make an integrated set of choices regarding issues such as where the business will be active, how to get there, how to win, the specific actions and moves, and the model of profit generation.5 A business strategy articulates the direction a business will pursue and the steps it will take to achieve its goals. A good strategy has at least three characteristics: it creates value, it's unique, and it cannot be imitated.6